August 22, 2008

LiquorSnob Presents: America's Best Dive Bars, Volume 1

This summer we sent our interns on the road to bring us liquor news from around the country. We knew we should've put LoJacks on them, because they disappeared for the first three weeks, then surfaced with this report out of the South.

Seems they've decided to focus their research on the best dive bars in America. You know the type of place. Cheap drinks, shit plastered all over the walls, a water stained pool table, and a damn good jukebox. Plus, we finally got to realize our dream of using the words "insufferable douche" on the site.

Earnestine and Hazel's Sundry Store
531 South Main Street
Memphis, Tennessee
"We only server burgers, beer, and soda," the owner of Ernestine and Hazel's Sundry Store tells us as we settle onto a couple of battered barstools. "Y'all are a bit early. This here is a nighttime place. Doesn't even get going until midnight." Then she serves us Miller High Life bottles and offers to give us the tour.

The bar used to be a brothel back in the day, and they didn't change much upstairs, just left it like a hotel. Otis Redding used to hang out here. Ray Charles shot up heroin in the corner room. You can still drink in these rooms filled with banged up tag sale furniture, broken pinball machines and ripped vinyl chairs. It's the kind of bar where you can feel the ghosts watching from the peeling wallpaper. Okay, so maybe there's a photo of insufferable douche Orlando Bloom posing at the jukebox for the movie Elizabethtown. But at least (according to the locals) it's the best jukebox in Memphis.